


Decisions

by Churbooseanon



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 15:45:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4311057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are a lot of choices that we are made when you wake up in a padded room, cuffed to a bed. Including 'Who am I?'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Decisions

There are a lot of choices that we are made when you wake up in a padded room, cuffed to a bed. Some are minor but immediately relevant. The first and most important, in a lot of ways, is whether or not to panic. One could struggle against their bindings, flailing and arcing off the bed to try and find the right leverage to break the bonds. One could raise their voice in fury, shout and scream and plead. They could sob and rant and threaten to try and get themselves free. Or, of course, they could recognize the futility of it all. Stay still, don’t fight. Call out lightly that they are awake and would like to talk to someone in charge. 

Of course the answer for him depends on an entirely different choice. Because when he wakes there is another question that must come first. The answer to it, he supposes, decides whether to scream and struggle, or wait and pray. 

The question is one he’s certain he has asked before. There is a haze in his mind as to why there are so many options, but they must be processed. Sorted and discarded. It was an analytical personality that suggested that, and all the rest of him, hims, agreed that it was probably the best way to face all the problems presented to them. Of course, the rationality wore on one. What the fuck was the point, after all, when they were here, like this? Clearly sanity was something someone questioned. Questioned enough that his safety, his ability to not harm others (or himself) was called into question. That’s what the straps meant, right?

But no, a choice must be made on who he is, and it does stand though. Panic and fear find themselves at bay, swallowed back as he closes his (gray blue poisonous green) eyes and tires the question in his mind. Who am I? 

_My name is Leonard Church._

The words come unbidden to his mind. Or perhaps the asking prompted, no, demanded an answer anyway. So he accepts it, tries it on for size. Leonard Church is a storied man. He knows pain, knows grief. Has a reason to hurt. He delves into Leonard Church and remembers his first kiss with Allison and such love. He lost her. Lost and gone and dead. All he did he did for her. For her love, her devotion, her affection. Still, he had lost her. Gone, and she’d hate the man he’d become. He knows, deep inside he knows that, because she’d never approve of Alpha. Of Beta. Of… 

_I am the Alpha. Please, make it stop._

All he’s ever done is his very best. Tried to be strong, composed. His tasks were, in the grand scheme of things, important. More than important. He was tasked with protecting them all. He is their AI and they are his team. They are meant to save everyone and everything, and this is where it landed him. Every part of him is a failure, a ruined failure. The team dead, all because he couldn’t keep them safe. South dead in an explosion, North trying to save her and sinking to the bottom of the sea. Maine burned and Wyoming buried in an avalanche. Pain after pain. Loss after loss as he is torn apart piece by piece by piece by…

_I only know this because I am memory. I am Epsilon._

He is loss and suffering, and all of the rest of this makes sense. Panic sets in. Eyes flash open as he flails and screams and shouts and pleads. This is just another test, another simulation, another lie to break him, break the Alpha. He is not Church, or the Alpha, but rather a pain of them both. Only the pain of them both. Only the suffering and loss and the torture. They broke him. Told him Allison, Texas, Beta died and it was all his fault. Is his fault. He never got to say goodbye. Will never get to say goodbye to any of them. They are dead, even the rookie. Even the rookie dead and it was a lie, all a lie, lie lie lie. When he woke up it was in Washington’s mind, screaming and unwinding, broken and breaking until Washington was so little and he was gone. Broken and gone again and again and then… 

_Which, I suppose, leaves me._

Agent Washington closes his eyes, silences himself. The situation… makes more sense now. A bit more sense. It means they expect screaming and struggle. Fear what he might do to himself now that Epsilon was gone. What Epsilon had done to himself, done to Washington, and where that might leave him, dead and dying and wanting to be gone. 

They’re wrong. He wants to live. To survive. For now. But he’s broken. Washington knows that. All his pieces broken and scattered on the ground. In their place three more minds, still echoing without being there at all. Their actions, their choices, define who he is now, how he got here. And their knowledge promises to kill him if he shared. Some secrets are too dangerous to keep, and he had never been trusted with these. Just had them thrust upon him, little stolen words and memories of a broken, rotting man. Thrust upon them. Him. There is only one of him and he is here, living and surviving. Which means choosing. 

He chooses to be here and accept it. To be Washington and Washington is a Freelancer. Was a Freelancer. Hard to tell now. But Freelancers see a problem and try to solve it. Improvise. That must be the man they see, not the broken husk they made. Not the echoes of loss. Of torture. Of death. 

“Hey!” he shouts, frowning as he opens his eyes again. “Counselor? Director? Someone wanna explain what’s going on here?”

Play clueless because, in a lot of ways, he is. So much of his mind is a strange haze. Clouds that Wash is familiar with. It happens with physical trauma. That time a building exploded wrong and he’d been pinned under a steel beam he couldn’t remember at all. All he knew about it was what he’d been told by his teammates. And now, he supposed, what Alpha or Epsilon had known about it all. Trauma changed a lot, and having someone die, kill themselves in his head had to count. What could be worse? 

“David, it is good to see you are awake.”

He doesn’t know which is worse, the fact that the Counselor was really there to watch him in this vulnerable state, or the name used. The implication that the soldier was discarded in favor of the useless boy…

Washington remembers David. A young man who laughed and believed in things. A boy whose understanding of war came from vids, who never had a chance regarding the military. Kids in the foster system were UNSC property at eighteen. Somehow the boy had thought it wouldn’t happen to him, that his foster family would adopt him before then. They had taken care of him for so long. Gave him what he wanted and needed. Gave him a little sister, a child they had never known they could have. Of course then they could afford less. ANd still David, hopeful David, had thought they had a future for him. So naive. 

David was weak. David believe in the UNSC, trusted it. The military gave him to Freelancer. David believed in the project, intended to make a difference. His life had instead been shattered. David had believed in his teammates, saw them as friends. They had left him behind. That much he was certain of. Abandoned and betrayed many times over, and gullible. 

No, David wasn’t a fitting choice either. David was pathetic. 

David died with Epsilon. 

“Washington,” he corrects the Counselor. “My name is Washington.”

That was potential. That was strength. A man who clawed his way up from the bottom of the leaderboard. Washington could hit any target he was told, whether he was on the move or it was. Washington survived Epsilon and the project. Washington wasn’t a person. No, he was a weapon. So the Director had made him. A weapon with no safety and an axe to grind. A part of himself to avenge. Nothing to lose in the process. 

David would, had lost everything. Lay dead in the dust behind him, just like Epsilon. Washington rose from the ashes as he always did. Nothing kept Washington down. 

And in the end, his cold and bitter hate would soon be turned on the ones who had destroyed poor, naive David. A cold, bitter hate that would consume all before him and behind, until the tool lay spent and discarded, never to be used again.


End file.
